Just over a year ago, a healthy 18-year-old Colorado girl died due to complications from an elective induced abortion at 22 weeks (5.5 months). As an OBGYN in the state – who previously performed second-trimester abortions – my heart breaks imagining her fear and her belief that abortion was the only answer to an unexpected pregnancy.
Instead, it took her life.
Since then, the lack of outcry about her death is sobering and a harsh reminder that the media, legislators and the medical community are failing women and shirking their responsibility.
While Colorado has no gestational limits on abortion, legal does not equate to safe, and we are placing moms and babies in significant danger. Colorado’s policies should serve as a national warning.
My experience performing later abortions opened my eyes to the many risks of the procedure. Most women don’t realize that the window for error is high, growing exponentially as the baby develops.
Second trimester abortions are already complicated surgical procedures. Third trimester abortions are even more complex, often including multi-day inductions of labor with difficult removal of the baby and placenta. In the words of the infamous former Colorado abortionist Dr. Warren Hern, the “procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because the fetal tissues become…difficult to dismember…the calvaria (head) is no longer the principal problem; it can be collapsed. Other structures, such as the pelvis, present more difficulty.”
Studies have found that one in 10 later abortions involve complications – even under the most qualified and vigilant care – including perforating a woman’s uterus, in addition to potentially causing serious blood loss.
The dangers are especially dire in Colorado, where abortions are legal up till birth, and the state health department has no obligation to regulate, inspect, or oversee abortion clinics. Without oversight, most Colorado abortion facilities aren’t even held to the same medical standards as tattoo parlors.
Colorado doesn’t require any credentialing, nor that the abortionist be a licensed physician. Because Colorado abortion facilities aren’t held to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, labor and delivery units, or hospitals, there is no mandatory quality assurance program or peer review and no formal mechanism to identify potential system changes after adverse outcomes occur. Twice, Colorado legislators killed bills that would have established a process for instituting public health and safety standards for facilities that perform abortions after the first trimester, as is the standard for other women’s healthcare.
Pro-abortion advocates have smeared attempts to offer commonsense protections for women, like the aforementioned bills, as political stunts to remove women’s rights. In reality, the absence of safeguards for Colorado women enables horrifying results with no accountability.
In 2025, the Planned Parenthood that ended this teenager’s life had to call at least seven ambulances for patients in their care due to undisclosed reasons. She had a chance of life if she had immediately received the emergent care she needed, including immediate transport to a hospital. Did the facility have emergency protocols, and were they followed? Did they practice emergency simulations? Were there transfer protocols and were they followed? What were the doctor’s credentials? Actually, Colorado does not require any credentialing, nor that the abortionist be a physician.
This type of “care” is what pro-abortion activists seek in every state across the country. Pro-abortion ballot initiatives, like the one passed in Colorado, are enshrining an absolute right to abortion into state constitutions at record pace. Lawmakers are fighting commonsense legislation to safeguard moms and babies at the state and federal level. Should this trend continue, an increasing number of states will allow dangerous later abortions to proceed at the expense of women, many of whom would prefer to parent if they could simply access more resources and support.
Rather than feeding women’s fears and submitting them to the horrors of later abortion, medical professionals have an obligation to provide them with greater details about what later abortion entails, and any potential consequences. Lawmakers have an obligation to ensure that at the very least, abortion facilities are held to higher medical standards than organizations that merely stamp ink onto citizens’ arms.
We will likely never know what this teenager ultimately needed, what prompted her to seek such a dangerous and heartbreaking option, or whether she was pressured into her later abortion.
We do know that she and her preborn baby deserved better, and that in the absence of accountability or safeguards, more young women like her are doomed to find out the risks of later abortion too late.
Catherine J. Wheeler, M.D. is a board-certified OB/GYN who practiced for 24 years in Utah and now resides in Colorado.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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